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Help Overclocking Rampage IV Formula/3930K ... calling HiVizMan lol

thebski
Level 9
Hey all,

I recently went from a 2600K and MIVE to a 3930K AND RIVF. I'm all new to X79 overclocking, but I'm trying to get this bad boy tweaked up.

The only reason I call for HiVizMan is because he was so incredibly helpful to me when I got my 2600K. His mastery can be found in this thread right here. I will gladly take any other assistance though.

I've had a look at the UEFI Overclocking Guide sticky, and it does a great job of explaining what everything is. It doesn't really give a whole lot for recommendations though, and I imagine that's because there's a couple of different ways to go about things.

Let's get to the fun stuff ... my system currently stands as the following:

Intel Core i7-3930K
Asus Rampage IV Formula
16 GB Corsair Vengeance 1866 CL9 Memory 1.5V
Seasonic X-1250
Custom Water Loop

Those are the OC'ing related components anyways.

I am pretty excited because I think my particular 3930K has a lot of promise just based on the 3 or 4 hours I played with it last night. I'm not willing to declare it a golden chip yet by any means, but I think it's got some headroom.

Here are the settings I have changed so far ....

AI Overclock Tuner - X.M.P Profile 1 (I did not change anything about memory OC other than enable XMP Profile 1 and set voltage to 1.52)
Turbo Ratio - By Per Core
Multi - 48 on all 6

Digi Settings

CPU LLC - Medium
CPU Current Capability - 180%
VCCSA LLC - Regular



VCore Voltage - Manual Mode
VCore - 1.400V
DRAM Voltage (CHA, CHB) - 1.520
DRAM Voltage (CHC, CHD) - 1.520

I believe that is all I changed. I set VRAM to 1.52 because when we overclocked this same memory in my MIVE, HiVizMan had me turn it to 1.52 and it really unlocked things for me.

Those very settings right there were stable for 1 hr on AIDA64 EE Stress Test with GPU's and the whole system working. Max temps after 1 hour ranged from 66-75C across the cores (I don't have a great mount I don't think). I will say that those were the maxes, and usually the processor was in the upper 60's on all cores throughout the stress test.

I tried 4.9 and it BSOD'ed about a minute into the AIDA64 stress test.

I'm still very excited because it took a lot of tweaking to get my 2600K stable at 4.8 with 1.4V.

That was my first overclocking attempt and I just did it quickly without reading any terribly extensive guide. One thing I am pretty sure I'm going to want to do is get whatever OC I'm going to run set with the voltage offset so it can power down during idle times. I also either want to see if I can get 4.9 or maybe even higher stable at 1.4V or if 4.8 is the most I'm going to be able to do then get all the voltages as low as they can be to minimize heat at that frequency.

I mainly am just unsure of what settings really effect the stability of these chips. With the Sandy's, there was a couple voltages (CPU PLL, VCCIO, etc.) that you could tweak that really had an effect on your system. I guess I'm just looking for assistance fine tuning this thing.

For now, I'm going to attempt the same 4.8 OC with offset mode and see what that is like. HiViz ... you ready for another OC sesh?
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thebski
Level 9
I'm trying to OC with the offset because I would like to let the processor down clock and down volt when it needs to. It's acting kind of weird though.

I started a stability test at 4.8 with 1.4V and observed my VID in Core Temp read 1.3761V. So 1.4V-1.3761V= 0.0239V. I set my offset at 0.02, which should give me a VCore of 1.3961V.

Well I'm stability testing right now and my VCore is reading 1.37V in HWMonitor. That's not what it should have added up to, but I hate reading voltages via software so I'm headed to Radio Shack to pick up a voltmeter.

Any ideas why my voltage seemingly wouldn't be offsetting? I guess the good news is that it hasn't crashed yet at 4.8 Ghz at 1.37V!

HiVizMan
Level 40
Hey thebski you good mate, wow you have steppe up the ante big time I see. Nice rig mate.

Just a quickie before we proceed have you gone through Raja's offset guide yet? Pretty sure it is a stick in the Rampage sub section.

OK moving on.

Your voltage is fine and that is indeed a very promising CPU. The big thing and I know you remember this from last time is 'let temperature be your guide'.

As to why your voltages have not dropped back, lets get some information before we pin point the cause yeah.

What is the OS power plan you are using?
What are he S states you have enabled in BIOS, do you have CE1T or speedstep disabled?

Just a heads up I am going to be out for a bit tonight and most of tomorrow, but I will check back via my phone if I can but no promises. So I will not have blown you off if I do not reply as quickly as I normally would.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

thebski
Level 9
Hey Viz good to see you still around setting us noobs straight :p! Thanks for the compliments on the rig. It has been the focus of much of my "away-from-work" hobby time and has been so much fun. I did step the ante up a bit as I had the chance to trade a GTX 670 and a few extra bucks I had for this 3930K that was factory sealed BNIB so I hopped on it.

Ok back to business ... I did read Raja's offset OC guide, but I wasn't sure if it was directly applicable to X79 as he did it specifically with a 2500K and has it in the Maximus motherboards section. That is what got me started doing this offset though. If it is directly applicable including some of the settings he used on the 1155 platform then I will go back and pay much closer attention to the specific numbers he was recommending.

I just did this fresh install on the OS when I got the mobo and CPU yesterday, so the power plan I'm using is the original Balanced plan except I have set it so that the displays will shut off after 2 hours and I have set it to never power completely off due to inactivity (I've had many stress test sessions killed that way :p)

For the S states I have not changed them from the optimized defaults (I assume your talking about C1E, C3, C6, C7). Speed Step and Turbo Mode are Enabled while CPU C1E, CPU C3 Report, CPU C6 Report, and CPU C7 Report are all set to Auto. Am I on the right track for these settings? I was under the impression that power saving states had to stay enabled in order for the CPU to down clock and down volt itself at idle.

I have been playing with the offset overclocking and it's looking quite promising actually. I changed the Turbo Ratio setting to "By All Cores" and set them to 48. Do you recommend "By All Cores" or "By Per Core"?

With memory XMP Profile 1 enabled, 0.02 offset (which reads 1.36-1.37V in software) it did fine in 45 minutes of AIDA64 stress testing. Max temps also went from 75 to 67 although that is not very fair because I was not running the GPU's this morning so my loop was not heating up near as much overall. I would say the equilibrium water temp goes up another 3-5C when both 670's are working at 99% as compared to just CPU.

I don't know how much I'm going to mess with Prime95 this time. I broke down and bought AIDA64 and since it allows me to stress GPU's at the same time I think I'm going to stick with that. I'm running shorter runs now just to get a feel for stability, but when I think I'm where I want to be I'll let it go for 4-6 hours to make certain it's going to be ok.

No worries on your busy schedule. Also, do not worry about trying to check via phone and trying to respond. Just wait until you are at a computer and it's easy! I just sincerely appreciate your help period so whenever it comes I will be happy!

thebski
Level 9
Here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about ...

CPU-Z reads 1.360V while my VID shows 1.3761V. All with a +0.015V offest ... puzzling for sure, but super cool that it doesn't crash hard at that frequency with only 1.36V! I'm not necessarily convinced that is particularly stable, but it may be.

HiVizMan
Level 40
I think you lucked in my friend with that CPU. Just do not kill it by going crazy with the stress testing, seen far to many top CPU's get trashed that way. A couple of hours is good enough.

The 48 by all cores, spot on.

Raja's offset guide is applicable from a theoretical perspective across all ROG Intel systems. At 4.8GHz and those voltages, I would not even bother trying to follow his numbers, your CPU is different. as are all CPU's and his numbers worked for his CPU's. That one you have is a sweet sweet bit of silicone and it is running real peachy right now. Think you got the sweet spot dialed in mate. You can mess with it a bit more if you want, but make sure you have saved the current set up as a profile. AND no bios updates only do so if you need to fix stuff.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

thebski
Level 9
I think I got very lucky as well. I don't know what's normal, but I feel like these are some pretty dang low voltages for 4.8 GHz on a 6-core chip. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to run another minute of stress tests because I have found that AIDA64 is apparently not the best stability test. BF3 turns out to be much better and less stressful at the same time ;).

Here's where I'm at ... I'm thinking 4.8 with a +0.015 offset has some promise, but if not I think we can for sure make +0.020 work.

I am only going to list settings that I have changed ... so if I do not list it assume it is factory settings, but do ask if you are interested in specific settings:

AI Overclock Tuner - X.M.P
Turbo Ratio - By Per Core ---Would I benefit from "by all cores"?
1-6-Core Ratio Limits - 48
CPU VCORE Voltage - Offset Mode
Offset Mode Sign - +
CPU VCORE Offset Voltage - 0.015
VTT CPU Voltage - 1.10000
DRAM Voltage (CHA, CHB) - 1.520
DRAM Voltage (CHC, CHD) - 1.520
CPU PLL Voltage - 1.80625

DIGI+ Power Control Section

CPU Load-Line Calibration - Medium
CPU Current Capability - 180%

Ok, these are the settings that I want to work with and think have a lot of promise, but I'm not sure they're quite stable. I will just tell you what I've tried and what has happened ...

I first tried the settings above with the following changes:

- Both DRAM Voltages were set to 1.50 somehow rather than 1.52. I think I forgot to switch them one time and it got saved as a profile, and then reloaded as a reference and I just never caught that they were only at 1.50.
- VTT CPU Voltage and CPU PLL Voltage were both set to Auto

At these settings, it BSOD'ed during an AIDA64 stress test about 15-20 minutes in. So then I tried the following settings:

-Changed VTT CPU Voltage to 1.10000. This is the standard value the bios lists, but I know sometimes Auto voltages can cause instabilities
-Changed CPU PLL Voltage to 1.80625. 1.80000 is standard according to bios.

These settings actually ended up passing 90 minutes of AIDA64 stress test and I shut it off thinking that the bump in CPU PLL voltage stabalized me. I got into BF3 ... 20-30 minutes into it the computer freezes up and crashes. So then I changed CPU VCORE Offset Voltage to 0.020. BF3 ran for 2-2.5 hours before it crashed at those settings. So I bumped it up again to 0.025 and BF3 crashed in about 30 minutes again. What this tells me is that this CPU is not voltage hungry at all relatively speaking.

At this point I was somewhat puzzled on what to try next and was going to wait for your advice. Then I was looking in the bios and realized the DRAM voltages were only 1.50 the whole time and pretty much rendered all my previous testing useless. Just a few minutes ago I got done playing on the settings I listed very first up above for about 30 minutes. It's time for me to go to bed, so I can't play long enough to see if it crashes again. Tomorrow will hopefully give me a good amount of time to test.

As far as the VCore on all of this, I really don't know what to believe. Something isn't correct because my VID + Offset DO NOT add up to my VCore readings in CPU-Z and Hardware Monitor. CPU-Z and Hardware Monitor have always been spot on for me in the past in terms of showing the voltage I have it set to (I haven't actually hooked up a volt meter to verify true voltage). At 0.015 Offset both Hardware Monitor and CPU-Z show 1.360 volts. At 0.025 Hardware Monitor showed 1.38 volts, but I didn't see CPU-Z while the processor was loaded. I forgot to look all together at 0.020 offset. Do I absolutely need to measure with a volt meter, or is CPU-Z accurate? The volt read points aren't as easy as I'd hoped with the board mounted in the machine. The ground spot and VCore spot are also really close to each other. I'm a little worried I'll accidentally arc them and fry something if I try to put the volt meter to it.

I mainly just wanted to update you on where I was at and also ask you a few questions. If you see any settings that you think should obviously be changed then let me know. Like I said, anything not listed above I did not change. I did not list memory speed and all that because it was automatically changed when I enabled XMP.

I did update the board with the latest bios before I did anything with it, so I do not plan on changing the bios again unless problems arise for some reason.

Long post, but I think that's it for now!

HiVizMan
Level 40
The VCore is spot on, as you are looking at the load voltages and that is within the correct spec for Intel's built in vDroop which I strongly recommend you do not flatten out with too much LLC. It is there for a purpose.

Your area of focus is I believe your ram. This platform is very sensitive to DDR3 and while you have a very strong CPU frequency wise, I have found that the IMC of those strong core CPU's is not always as good. Hey you can't have it all mate. Play around with your offsets and the sub-timings. But take it slow and record all that you do. BF3 is indeed the best stress test at the present moment. Just be aware that some of the crashes can be due to the innovative coding in the game, some call that rubbish coding or bugs. 🙂 The Campaign is a point in case where heaps of folks are having issues.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

thebski
Level 9
I wanted to ask you some general questions about some settings HiViz ...

I mainly have questions centering around VTT CPU Voltage, CPU PLL Voltage, and CPU VCCSA Voltage. It seemed that my system was not stable at all when VTT and PLL were both on Auto. When I set VTT manually to it's default value and set PLL voltage manually to it's default +0.00625V it stabalized it a lot. Do you think it was my manual setting of the voltages that had the effect, or will changing the PLL voltage slightly have a large effect on stability?

Also I'm not really sure what VCCSA voltage does but it seems to have an offset system just like VCore. Is there any reason for me to mess with that if things are still crashing?

What I'm thinking is that maybe I could even get 0.010 VCore offset to work if I fine tune some of these voltages to keep it stable. Do you think it is best to find the absolute lowest VCore and fine tune these other voltages, or is tuning these voltages not much different than changing VCore?

Also, in Raja's guide he says he recommends a VCCSA Load-Line Calibration setting of medium for most overclocking. I believe mine has been left on Auto, so I just wondered if that would change anything.

I played a round of BF3 at the settings I listed in my last post that I thought were most promising and it made it through the whole round without crashing. If those settings don't give me any trouble today I may bump offset down to 0.010 and see just how low VCore I can run 4.8 with 😄

thebski wrote:
I wanted to ask you some general questions about some settings HiViz ...

I mainly have questions centering around VTT CPU Voltage, CPU PLL Voltage, and CPU VCCSA Voltage. It seemed that my system was not stable at all when VTT and PLL were both on Auto. When I set VTT manually to it's default value and set PLL voltage manually to it's default +0.00625V it stabalized it a lot. Do you think it was my manual setting of the voltages that had the effect, or will changing the PLL voltage slightly have a large effect on stability? Auto does not always mean that a single value will be used. Rather a generic set of values will be used depending to load or need. Once you set a voltage most of the time that is it.

PLL will have effects but each CPU will react differently to the increase, or decrease in voltage. The main effect of PLL for the overclocker is the heat that increasing PLL results in. With SB for example some folks were able to increase their Air cooled overclock by lowering the PLL - my one CPU was happy with 1.55 PLL


Also I'm not really sure what VCCSA voltage does but it seems to have an offset system just like VCore. Is there any reason for me to mess with that if things are still crashing? Again you can experiment with what your unique CPU needs, so it is nearly impossible for me to answer this question in any meaningful way. What I can suggest is read the guide that Raja wrote where he goes into some depth as to the purpose and ways to use each setting.

What I'm thinking is that maybe I could even get 0.010 VCore offset to work if I fine tune some of these voltages to keep it stable. Do you think it is best to find the absolute lowest VCore and fine tune these other voltages, or is tuning these voltages not much different than changing VCore? The additional voltage that you have made available using the vCore will only be used as and when it is needed. Let me try and explain it this way. What you are doing is creating a reserve in case needed.

Also, in Raja's guide he says he recommends a VCCSA Load-Line Calibration setting of medium for most overclocking. I believe mine has been left on Auto, so I just wondered if that would change anything. Yes I agree with Raja, I prefer to set my LLC rather than leave it on auto. Medium is a good balanced level. I do not advocate high or extreme.

I played a round of BF3 at the settings I listed in my last post that I thought were most promising and it made it through the whole round without crashing. If those settings don't give me any trouble today I may bump offset down to 0.010 and see just how low VCore I can run 4.8 with 😄


That is a looking really good my friend. Look forward to the next instalment.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.